The reading of electrical energy has historically been accomplished with human meter readers that came on-site to the customers' premises and manually documented the readings. The information extracted from the meters was simple pulse initiator information of basic quantities. (A pulse initiator (PI) is an optical device that picks up the rotations of a disc on an electromechanical meter. The disc rotations, which are proportional to energy use, are converted by the PI into pulses that can be read by computing devices.) Over time, manual meter reading has been enhanced with walk-by or drive-by reading systems that utilize radio communications between the meters and a meter reading device. The information that these walkby and driveby systems collected increased, but still the functions provided by the communication systems were limited. More recently, over the last few years, there has been a concerted effort to accomplish meter reading by installing fixed networks that would allow data to flow from the meter to a host computer system without human intervention.
The fixed RF communications that have been deployed have been primarily for basic meter reading. Some enhancements to the systems have permitted functions such as time of use (TOU) and load survey to be incorporated.
Other functions are being performed with RF communications but they are typically standalone systems, separate from metering systems. One of the primary reasons these systems are not integrated is a lack of a single device that incorporates the protocols necessary to adapt the systems into a manageable unit that will work with a system infrastructure that is cost effective for simple AMR.
One example of an integrated system is the TranstexT system, which incorporates metering into a home automation environment. (Systems of this type are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,572,438, Nov. 5, 1996, "Energy Management and Building Automation System"; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,544,036, Aug. 6, 1996, "Energy Management and Home Automation System.") This system provides higher function capabilities for elements of TOU, real-time pricing and load management, but the basic infrastructure is not cost effective for AMR. Other systems that utilize broadband technologies such as cable to get to the home are also able to offer advanced services but are too expensive to be advantageous for AMR. Further background information regarding AMR (also called network meter reading, or NMR) can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,056,107, Feb. 15, 1990, "Radio Communication Network For Remote Data Generating Stations." Further information regarding the use of a meter in a CEBus network may be found in U.S. Patent Application Serial No. .sub.--, filed Mar. 31, 1997, "Communications Module Based Repeater" (attorney docket ABME-0213).